


shuffle off this mortal coil

by londer



Series: d20 alphabet 2021 [2]
Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Body Horror, Campaign 01 Season 01: Fantasy High Freshman Year (Dimension 20), Campaign 01 Season 02: Fantasy High Sophomore Year (Dimension 20), Gore, Horror, Illness, Kidnapping, Ramifications of Season 2, Suicidal Ideations (Mentioned)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:22:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29685312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/londer/pseuds/londer
Summary: 6 FH horror ficlets for the D20 Alphabet Challenge (E-J)
Series: d20 alphabet 2021 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2189991
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18
Collections: Dimension 20 Alphabet 2021





	shuffle off this mortal coil

**Author's Note:**

> heed those tags guys!  
> E-J for the D20 Alphabet Challenge

E / escape, **eldritch** , 

Riz dropped to the floor writhing. He didn't scream, but his mouth locked open in an agonized grimace. The pudge on his stomach and chest rippled nauseatingly and then started to move beneath the surface, green skin distending and horrible. 

Kristen and Adaine both screamed behind him, but Fabian just stood stock still, watching. He couldn't tear his eyes away from the way Riz's tattoos stretched and cracked as the skin handled the new intrusion. They locked eyes as the subcutaneous fat slithered up his neck and distorted his face, beginning to push bony blood-covered spikes out of Riz's cheekbones, his forehead, and one, sickeningly, from the center of his tongue. 

Fig said something, panic in her tone, and there was a rush of yellow magic as Kristen tried to dispel whatever had a hold on Riz, but Fabian could only stand there. Riz's eyes rolled back in his head, then dropped shut as he finally passed out from the pain of it all. He began glowing, faintly red, emanating directly from the sick mess of his body. His lower half was stripped of all fat, a puddle of loose skin and bones. His face continued to expand, more and more spines pushing out of his face. The kitchen floor was so wet with blood.

"What do we do?" Gorgug asked, right next to Fabian's ear. His axe was in his hands, muscles tight with anticipation. 

Fabian licked his lips. He couldn't tear his eyes away from whatever was being - born, maybe? - on the floor before him. 

Even if Riz was in there still, there's no coming back from this physically. 

"We kill it."

* * *

F / family, **fire** , flowers

Mordred Manor burned. Hot blue flames licked along the old wood panelling and antique couches smouldered with crass black fumes. 

Fig walked slowly through the inferno. Someone was screaming, somewhere, but this was a house of adventurers. Everyone would make it out fine. 

A support beam collapsed behind her and crumpled the floor beneath it. She didn't see it, eyes fixed on some distant middle. Fire could not touch her skin but smoke clogged her lungs just fine. This hurt, not in the way that smoking up with Tracker and Aelwyn hurt, a tight tickle in the back of her throat. This was pain, screaming flesh and depleted oxygen. The worse the air got, the harder she breathed and the worse her chest hurt.

It felt nice to feel something. After the Forest, nothing had ever quite felt right. Out of body. Out of her mind.

Had she set the fire? She couldn't quite remember but she thought not. This was someone else's work, the flames too material to have spawned from her palms. They had enemies now. Real ones, who disliked teenagers interfering in their schemes. 

Lola kept telling them to upgrade security. Adventurers. So arrogant. And now on one of her melancholy days, Fig stood in the blazing dining room and filled her lungs with smoke.

* * *

G / **grief, growth**

Tracker bit into the meat of Kristen's shoulder and Kristen screamed. The mossy grass was soft and damp beneath her, the canopy of dark trees above her blocked the sun. The Nightmare King's Forest stank like tar and rotting vegetation. And now, like blood. It flooded steadily from her body as Tracker's canine maw pierced deep into flesh, scraping bone. 

How many times had Tracker hovered over her like this before? The feeling was so familiar, a warm body pressed along her own. Kristen shook and clawed at Tracker's shoulders - again, familiar, but distorted. Disturbed. A nightmare. She pushed Tracker away but Tracker's wolf form is stronger than her and the clamp of her jaw on Kristen's shoulder is firm.

A gunshot rang out somewhere distant. Riz, Kristen thought, through the haze of pain. She dipped out of consciousness as Tracker crawled off her body and ran snarling into the woods.

She came to in more pain, somehow. Her mouth itched in a way that burned, and she knew even before she lifted her working hand to probe her teeth what it meant. Lycanthropy, rooting through her blood. Her fangs distended from her gums, forced painfully through fragile skin. Everything smelled like blood.

Kristen wondered if she'd even survive this metamorphosis. If she even cared to go on like this. If Tracker could stand to live with what the Forest made her do. A week ago she would have fought. Now she's tired. She let her eyes close and the pain washed her away back into unconsciousness.

* * *

H / home, **healing** , holiday

Adaine doesn't have any healing magic. Adaine doesn't have _any healing magic._ Adaine _doesn't have_ any healing magic.

Her breathing was so hard and loud in this small cell. The white-washed walls closed in around her and red seeped from the wound in Fabian's stomach through her pale trembling fingers. She doesn't know enough to save him, head foggy at the sight of blood and adrenaline blocking the memories of how she might help beyond applying pressure and screaming for help.

Help would not be coming, of course. This pale mansion had separated them all in its winding stairs, endless corridors, and trick entrances that led to a different room for each of them. Adaine had stumbled through for days, alone, having fallen through a fake stair on the entrance. Every wall was bright white and emanated their own light. She was luckier than the others in that her jacket produced food and water and an eye mask to try and catch some small amount of sleep in between her wanderings.

They came in here for something. She forgot what, exactly, after the first few days. Or maybe it'd just been hours. Time was an impossible thing in this white empty place.

Fabian had found her asleep in a white marble basin. He'd nearly killed her trying to do CPR on her, thinking she was dead already. He looked hollow and hungry and had torn the sandwich she pulled from her jacket near to shreds. They had agreed the thing to do was to get out however they could, and come back for whoever it was they had come into this place with.

There was a pattern to this place, if you looked long enough. Four switchback stairs and then a spiral stair. You could climb as high as you liked, but there was a lowest level. Marking the walls did nothing; you never came back to the same spot and when you turned around, walked a few paces, and then turned to walk back, the room would have changed and the wall you marked was gone.

The lowest level was populated with small cell-like rooms. Heavy white doors with a peek-slit that opened from the exterior, white benches, a toilet. They checked them all, just to be sure, and that's when -

Well, something happened, and now Fabian's bleeding from a deep gash on his stomach. Adaine can't remember who did it or what did it, only that one minute they walked into the cell and the next she was on the floor beside him, attempting to staunch the life flooding onto the floor.

* * *

I / injury, introspection, **illness**

Gorgug looked like shit. His green skin was a pallid off-yellow and he had enormous bags under his eyes. Deep, wracking coughs shook his frame every few minutes.

"You look like shit," Riz said as he pinned another photo into the web building on the wall. Gods, hopefully that shit wasn't catching. "Go home, dude, you're no help to the investigation like this. Take some cough syrup or get a heal or something."

Gorgug coughed again and gave a nodding shrug. "Kristen says there's nothing her magic can do against it, so it's probably just a common cold." His voice was a mess, phlegmy and wet on a cough-dry throat. Yuck. Riz was going to spray down the chair he's sitting in right now once he was gone.

"Gross," Riz said. "Go sleep it off, big guy. I've got this for right now."

Gorgug didn't show to school the next day and he's quiet in the group chat. Riz, against his better judgement, went to visit him. Gorgug looked worse, somehow, exhaustrion written plainly across his brow. He looked almost...withered. Like the life was slowly draining away from his body. The bags under his eyes were worse and his face had a sunken, wrinkled look to it. Gorgug lay very still on his bed, huddled shivering under a mountain of blankets.

"This isn't a just cold, is it?" Riz asked Wilma in the kitchen. Her eyes were tight with worry.

"I don't know, kiddo," she said, wringing her hands nervously as she assembled a tray of food. "Two healers and their magic didn't touch the source of it even a little. Whatever this is, he has to come through it on his own."

* * *

J / **jitters** , jealousy, joy

"A duel for the lady's honor," Fabian said, voice ringing in the high-vaulted hall. He looked like a fairy-tale prince in his white robe, hand on the hilt of his sword at his belt.

"Fabian I got this," Fig lied from where she stood bound beside the flaming pyre in arcane chains. She looked tired and greasy and out of spell slots.

"Fabian, this is stupid," Kristen hissed beside Gorgug, and he and Riz both made noises of agreement.

"I accept," said the draconic sorceror who kidnapped Fig. The flames of the pyre dimmed, and the cathedral dipped towards twilit darkness. "Five minutes. Name a second." He turned and swept towards the back of the altar, stroking one hand over Fig's cheek as he went. 

Fabian turned to them. His grip on his sword was white-knuckled and shaky. It had been a long time since they'd last rested on this interplanar quest to find Fig, the trail running too hot to leave off for more than snatches of sleep.

"I'm your second," Gorgug said right away. That's his fucking bandmate. He's going apeshit on this guy if he gets the chance.

Fabian nodded sharply. "Good. Thank you, Gorgug."

"You're going to get killed," Adaine said quietly. Her eyes had that hazy white glow to them of one of her visions. "Fabian, this is _moronic_. He's twice your strength. We could have just fought them outright."

"They have Fig," Fabian said coolly. "We attack, she dies."

"You do this, you die and probably the rest of us too. We could have snuck around back, we probably would have survived-"

Fabian looked at her with hollow eyes. Gorgug hated that expression he got sometimes when it came to Fig. "Probably's not good enough. Better to die with honor."

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr [here](https://myclericalromance.tumblr.com)


End file.
